Ongoing commitment to South Africa

Alstom is again partnering with Eskom, the state-owned utility company to help meet South Africas power demands. Alstom has been awarded a contract for Project Bravo, to supply six steam turbines and generators worth over 1.3 billion euros, located in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The total capacity will bring around 4740 MW of power onto the grid. Second only to Project Medupi, the new Bravo contract constitutes one of the largest turbine contracts ever.

Project Bravo reinforces Alstoms commitment to job creation and increasing the nations power capacity. 50% of the contract will be manufactured locally supporting local skills and training.  The partnership will directly create over 300 Alstom jobs and many more for the project in total. Project Bravo confirms Alstoms position in meeting RSAs power requirements.
 
The official signing ceremony for Bravo between Alstom and Eskom took place on 29th February 2008 in Cape Town. In attendance were French President Nicolas Sarkozy and current RSA President Thabo Mbeki. Also present were Alstom executives Patrick Kron, Alstom Chairman and CEO and Philippe Joubert, President of Alstom Power Systems alongside Eskom executives Jacob Maroga CEO and Brian Dames, Managing Director of Eskoms Power Generation Division.

Solidifying Alstoms strong commitment to South Africa, Philippe Joubert said, We know that our success up until now has been possible due to a strong local presence through Alstom South Africa. We intend to carry through the philosophy of strong job creation using a local supply chain and respecting, Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) and  Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements. 

The signing coincides with the inauguration of the new Alstom offices in Johannesburg that took place on 27th February 2008 in front of key customers, employees and captains of South African industry. The new offices will be responsible for executing the Bravo and Medupi projects as well as other future Alstom projects in the country. The new offices are an expansion of Alstom South Africa, which currently employs over 5,500 people within the Power and Transport Sectors.     

Future new energy investments are likely to include coal, gas, hydro and nuclear programmes, as well as wind. Alstom is responding with its balanced portfolio of turnkey solutions for coal, gas, nuclear*, offering integrated solutions on all power technologies for a cleaner, more efficient energy mix.

* Conventional islands